The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued a circular directing its investigating officers (IOs) to record statements of individuals summoned under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) during office hours and not to keep them waiting for long.

Sources said the circular was issued after Bombay High Court directed the central agency to issue directives in this context as it took up the petition of a 64-year-old man who said he was summoned to the ED office for questioning and was kept waiting after midnight.

Recording of his statement, at unearthly hours, “definitely results in deprivation of a person’s sleep... basic human right of an individual”, the high court said, adding such actions by the agency violated the persons’ “right to sleep” under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The ED has informed the court that it has issued a fresh technical circular in this context. The circular said that the authorised officer or IO “shall be well prepared with copies of documents to be confronted as well as a questionnaire to examine the person summoned at the appointed date and time”.

The IO, while fixing the date and time of the compliance of the summons, should ensure that the person so summoned is taken up for examination on the appointed time and date without keeping him waiting for hours, the circular said.

The circular added that considering the nature of money laundering offence, where a person can transfer or conceal the proceeds of crime or destroy digital evidence in a short time using online tools, mobiles or other digital media, the IO “shall endeavour to conclude the examination of the person summoned expeditiously, ideally on the same day or the following day”.

“This approach may minimise the opportunity to the person summoned either to transfer or conceal proceeds of crime or to fabricate and concocted explanations,” it said, adding the IO should be made to record the statement of the person summoned during “earthly hours”, which is during office hours rather than stretching it too late at night.

It said examination of senior citizens and persons with medical conditions should be “restricted” to earthly hours and that it would be “appropriate to adjourn the examination to next date or any other mutually agreed date as a matter of practice”.